You are here

"We live in a time when compassionate rhetoric is used as a weapon of state-corporate control. The rhetoric focuses on ethical concerns such as racial, gender and same-sex equality, but is disconnected from any kind of coherent ethical worldview. Corporate commentators are thereby freed to laud these moral principles, even as they ignore high crimes of state-corporate power." (Media Lens editor David Edwards)

Australians who are alarmed at the situation in Syria have today expressed disappointment and concern at the emotive bias and poor research shown in ABC World Today 17 April 2015 report, "Syria chemical attack: UN ambassadors 'moved to tears' by video of child victims" on renewed investigations into purported use of chlorine and sarin gas on civilians in Syria. As noted in the interview, there would indeed need to be very strong proof of the government's use of such gases, and there is not. 1 It should by now be well known that the chlorine necessary to make gas is available everywhere as a household chemical, but also that chlorine gas is an ineffective poison to use in war. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria has repeatedly denied using such a gas and no-one has been able to come up with wholly convincing arguments that such a gas was used by anyone in any effective manner, let alone the Syrian government. There is evidence of the use of sarin gases in Syria but these have also not been convincingly linked to the Syrian Government, but they have been linked to 'rebels'. The Syrian Government surrendered all chemical weapons stocks in 2012. You can read a very detailed analysis and correspondence on how the facts have been tested and sifted here: The Red Line and the Rat Line, Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebelsWhy does the ABC persist in entertaining the reinvention this barrel-bomb-chemical-weapons story? Has it no memory of how the United States has run this line before as an excuse to destroy several states? Have the reporters concerned no sense of pity or responsibility for the consequences?

How long do they think that Syria can survive an assault funded and driven by world powers? Syrians voted overwhelmingly for Bashar al-Assad in an election monitored by UN observers last year. See "Attacking Syria is simply illegal". We are not talking about a 'regime' here. We are talking about a very popularly elected leader by a population determined to save its country even as that country is reduced to rubble by US, French and British arms whose public relations people weep crocodile tears for their victims - and blame Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian government is the only protective force left in Syria. It is the only force capable of routing ISIS and other 'rebel' forces out and bringing populations to safety.

Even if Bashar al-Assad were using gases or 'barrel bombs', given that his government is the only chance of survival for his people, why would the US/NATO and allies try to remove him except to destroy Syria and raze its people from the earth? For this seems to be in train via the numerous so-called 'rebels' supported and unleashed on Syria with funding and weapons supply from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States and Turkey (see Turkey's latest here)- to name a few war criminal states.

Tell me, how does pursuing Bashar al-Assad to the end help anyone?

And how can the ABC and the awful people it allows to rehash the chemical weapons furphy support the brutal Saudi Arabia dictatorship - whose dreadful religion is the prototype for ISIS doctrine - and damn Bashar al-Assad, who presides over a secular Arab state where women may wear what they want and go about their business, where there is free education and health care for all, and the home of millions of permanent refugees 2 well before al-Assad became 'the enemy' and the only permanent home to Palestinians in the Middle East?

Appendix: Other articles which refute claims that the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against its own people

Footnote[s]

1. ↑ For those who immediately go to Wikipedia, I can tell you that you will find that journalists mostly get their opinions about weapons in the Middle East from a blogger in Britain called Elliot Higgins who has learned through following events on the internet. If you go right to the end of the article, you will find a short paragraph entitled, "Criticism": "Richard Lloyd and Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated that "although he has been widely quoted as an expert in the American mainstream media, [he] has changed his facts every time new technical information has challenged his conclusion that the Syrian government must have been responsible for the sarin attack. In addition, the claims that Higgins makes that are correct are all derived from our findings, which have been transmitted to him in numerous exchanges." Note 16 will take you to The Red Line and the Rat Line, Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdogan and the Syrian rebels If you click on the link this will take you to a very comprehensive analysis of Higgins's observations in the light of much more varied sources. You might also take the time to listen to some interviews with Bashar al-Assad on you-tube, where he argues his case very logically. The most recent is by Charlie Rose of CBS News, 30 March 2015. (The complete video below is also embedded, with the transcript, here on candobetter. The full transcript can also be found on the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). - Ed)

2. ↑ Including 1.3m Iraqis who fled the illegal sanctions and wars of 1991 and 2003 and against Iraq in which Australia was complicit.

Comments

Over the course of the Syrian crisis, the ABC has consistently failed to fairly represent the situation in Syria and the true nature of the foreign-backed insurgency that the Syrian army is fighting. The question we must now ask, as the uniform support for this insurgency amongst Western media, NGOs and governments is copied by the ABC, is whether such reporting and the feeding of false information to its audience constitutes culpable action.

If the consequences of Western media lies and misinformation was benign then we may not need to worry, but I would wager that in fact the consequence is the facilitation of the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There was a significant opportunity afforded last year by the overwhelmingly positive vote for Bashar al Assad, for Western media to change tack, and start to look at why the Syrian people might feel like this. Some Western journalists did indeed start to change their tune, but the ABC showed no interest in visiting Damascus, or presenting a different angle. It is impossible to claim that they were unaware of the reality, or at least the possibility of a different viewpoint; a plethora of information was available in the public sphere, and on non-Western news services.

So to me this looks awfully like 'wilful ignorance'.

And as the campaign to remove Syria's leader is clearly intensifying, this ignorance can be no excuse - the consequences for the Syrian people and society will be devastating, and it will be OUR fault - because it's 'Our ABC'....